Dave Brown: Notes from a southern vacation

OTTAWA — Aim and fire a camera and it records the same two dimensional images for everybody, but using the mind as a camera lets the user focus in ways a camera can’t.

This means it’s time for our annual display of word snapshots from our winter vacation, and this time we focus on walking tours.

On top of the pile is a mind video of a walking tour of the waterfront of Charleston, S.C. Most guides can’t hide the fact they’ve repeated the same lines too often, but this time it’s obvious from the start the guide is engaged and involved. He’s a fountain of historical information with just the right mix of humour and personal experiences.

His name is Michael Trouche and a later chat discloses he’s an historian, an actor, an author, he spent his boyhood in the area of the tour, and he loves his hometown. He has served on the board of the city’s historical society, and the tour starts in front of that headquarters.

He has two dozen tourists in his trailing gaggle, and at one point he sees me running my hand over the surface of a large house that appears to be suffering from age. Stucco has broken away and bricks are exposed. But there’s a glaze over the building that obviously cost more than it would have to redo the stucco. He doesn’t wait for a question, and explains pains have been taken to maintain the area’s age and charm. The house in question has been recently updated, and care taken to make it appear it hasn’t been.

He talks about the power of the city’s heritage authority and points to a slate roof nearby. The building, like most in the area worth millions, needed a new roof. Heritage authorities wouldn’t allow modern roofing, so the owner went in search of slate. The original slate came from Wales. That’s where he had to go.

Trouche asks his gaggle to pay special attention to the narrow streets, and to imagine the chaos at the beginning of the 1900s when automobiles started sharing the uncontrolled intersections with horse-pulled wagons, trolleys and horseback riders. A civic employee was assigned to draw up rules for each type of conveyance. The city fathers approved them, and ordered him to have them printed and distribute copies to the different players in the traffic mess. Instructions wound up in the wrong hands, and the confusion worsened.

“The name of that man? ... Doofus!”

It’s worth a laugh, but hits the skeptic button in a reporter.

Later, Trouche explained the man’s name was spelled Duffus, and he was playing for the laugh. He worried that going into too much detail could embarrass a fine family that contributed much to the city’s history.

Trouche has the kind of charisma that makes everybody feel they’ve had a personal tour, and it’s 90 minutes well spent.

Further south: Fort Myers Beach, Fla., has a small park at its north end, the guided tour is free, and the guide is a member of the local historical society. She doesn’t want publicity, refuses tips, and there’s no nearby donation box. She too is a natural entertainer.

Early in the tour she takes us to a tree, and introduces it by its scientific name. Then she says it’s known locally simply as “the tourist tree.” Nobody can guess why. Look again, she says. It’s red, and peeling.

Somebody in her gaggle is obsessed with gender. The habitat is a protected nesting area for gopher turtles. They dig nests as deep as six metres, and many are lazing in the sun near the entrances. The voice wants to know how to tell the males from the females.

Turn them over, is the answer. The bottom of the male shell is concave. “For coupling.” Nothing funny here, but a flash of reminder about how clever nature is.

Later, our guide lifts the fronds of a low bush, about waist high, and shows it has circled itself with cone-shaped seed pods. That identifies the plant as female. The voice immediately wants to know how to identify a male.

“It will be either fishing or playing golf.”

Last snapshot to Trouche. He stood on the seawall at the point of the peninsula that is the city’s eastern extremity. Two rivers named after one founder, the Ashley and the Cooper, end there. But Trouche said in the view of proud Charlestonians: “This is where the Ashley and the Cooper join to form the Atlantic Ocean.”